Animation in V7 Part 9 - Saved views

Original Article Date: Sept 4, 2002

This suite of tutorials just keeps going and going and going...kind of like the Energizer Bunny! Anyway, there are so many different ways in which you can use the power of animation to make your models come to life. And in this article Sean looks at how you can incorporate the use of Saved Views in your animation! Note: The contents of this article is based upon MicroStation /J.

This just keeps going on and on. There are so many different ways in which we can use the power of animation to make our models come to life.

This time we’re going to have a look at how we can use Saved Views to animate our model.

The steps for this are as follows:

Create a Saved View.
Add Saved Views to Script.
Save Script and Record.

Step 1 - Create Saved View
Go to c:\Bentley\workspace\projects\examples\arch\dgn and open liv_room.dgn. We've used this file before, so you should already be familiar with it. Note, it may be a good idea to take a copy of the file and keep it in a safe location for later on.

Go to Utilities > Saved Views and notice that there are two views that are ready to go: archwa and camera.

We need to create one more saved view for our animation and it doesn't matter what it is, as long as it's different. The easy way to do this is to set up three windows that will be used for the: Top View, Side View and Destination View.

In the Top View, set the active depth about half way up the walls. To do this, select Set Active Depth and enter a data point in the Top View followed by a datapoint half way up the walls in the Side View. Easy stuff!

Now select the Camera Setup tool and enter a datapoint in the Destination View. To define the camera target point, move your cursor to the Top View and enter a datapoint somewhere outside of the room. To finish the camera setup enter a datapoint inside the room. This establishes where we are looking from.

To save the view go to the Saved Views dialog and ensure that the Source View is correct. Enter a name, description and click the Save button.

Step 2 - Add Saved Views to Script
One great thing about this type of animation is that you don't have to create camera and target actors. Once the Views are ready, all you have to do is script them. Let's take a look.

Go to Utilities > Render > Animation, this opens up the Animation Producer.

From here it's very simple to add the Saved Views. First you need to open the Script Saved Views dialog by selecting Settings > Saved Views from the Animation Producer. Notice that the dialog shows all saved views for the file, including the one made in Step 1.

To script a saved view, all you do is set the Frame Number, choose the Interpolation setting and the Velocity setting. Once those are set, you simply select one of the saved views and the settings are applied. You'll need to do this for each of the saved views.

As with all animations, you'll start from Frame 0.00 and go up by 10 frames for each saved view. You can leave the Interpolation setting as Linear and use any Velocity that you'd like. For something different, try Accelerate-Decelerate....this means that MicroStation will look at the difference in the positions of the two Saved Views and will set a mid-point. The animation will accelerate to the mid-point and then slow down to the final position of the next Saved View.

Step 3 - Save Script and Record
Now that you have the Saved Views scripted, you're ready to record....but remember, it's always a good idea to save the script first!